Ebook retailers maintain a variety of minimum standards and requirements to list your ebook on their site. To comply with these standards and ensure your ebook can be listed with any and all of our ebook retail partners, we require ebooks to meet these Distribution Requirements.


Failure to comply with any of these standards can result in rejection from our Global Distribution service. This includes any noncompliant file settings, content, or metadata.


Please note that all retail distributors manage their own retail sites and requirements. Lulu’s distribution requirements reflect the minimums and standards we’ve received from these retailers. But any retailer may, at their own discretion, update, amend, remove, or otherwise alter these requirements at any time and without notification. In the event of a discrepancy between Lulu’s requirements and a retailer’s, the retailer's requirements will supersede the list that follows.


IMPORTANT: Your ebook must be in English to be eligible for Global Distribtion.

TABLE OF CONTENTS

Ebook Distribution Review Fee

As part of the review process, Lulu charges a one-time fee of $4.99 (€4.99/£4.99) for the first time you submit an ebook to our Global Distribution service. The distribution review process helps ensure your ebook is accepted quickly by retailers.


This fee does not apply to revisions of a published ebook. For all newly published ebooks, the distribution fee must be paid prior to completing the Global Distribution submission process.

File Standards

All ebook files must be in EPUB format. Lulu’s converter can create an EPUB for you from a well-formatted DOCX file. If you intend to use Lulu’s file conversion, please review our ebook Creator Guide for detailed instructions.


If you are creating your own EPUB, we suggest using our Calibre EPUB Conversion Guide to create an EPUB that will pass all of Lulu’s uploading and distribution standards.


EPUB File Requirements:

  • Use EPUBCheck v5 to validate your content. EPUB 3 publications are checked against the EPUB 3.3 specification
  • DTBook EPUBs are not supported; submit EPUBs built with XHTML specifications.
  • EPUB must contain proper transcoding. Transcoding errors are commonly caused by improperly encoding the text in UTF-8 or UTF-16 format (EX: Äù ‚Äô ‚Äú ‚Ä¢ displaying instead of quotes, apostrophes, or bullets).
  • Your EPUB file must have a complete and accurate Table of Contents (NCX) file.
    • Complete - every chapter, section, sub-section, or other element created with a Heading Style must appear in the table of contents
    • Chapters should be represented sequentially and in order
  • Recommended file size less than 50 MB. Files over 500 MB may be rejected.

Content Standards

Lulu does not read or review the specific contents of your file. As part of our distribution review, our team and our retail partners must review the file to ensure it is properly formatted and all the content displays accurately when viewed on a variety of device sizes.


Content Requirements:

  • Text cannot be cut off or otherwise truncated.
  • Text and Images should not overlap or be layered in such a way that the content is obscured.
  • All content must be in English, using Latin character sets.
  • Images should be high-quality, clear, and complete. A blurry, pixelated, or cut-off image will cause your ebook to be rejected.
  • Images, tables, charts, or maps with text must be clearly readable.
  • Images must be saved in RGB color space.
  • EPUB files with interactive elements are not accepted.
  • EPUB files with fillable areas (EX: lines for writing notes or answers) are not accepted.
  • Your EPUB must contain a Copyright Page with accurate metadata including:
    • Title/Subtitle
    • Author
    • Copyright Date
    • ebook ISBN
  • Each retailer reserves the right to select the genre for your ebook. We recommend selecting the most accurate genre when creating your ebook on Lulu to help retailers correctly classify your ebook.
  • Erotica or adult content must be categorized appropriately.
    • Explicit content, as defined in the Lulu membership agreement and superseded by any retailer's standards, may cause an immediate rejection. All content must comply with Lulu’s membership agreement.
  • Illegal content is not allowed in retail distribution channels. This includes:
    • Public domain content
    • Repurposed Project Gutenberg content
  • Do not include any advertisements or prices in your ebook content.
  • Do not include any invalid links or links to online retailers or booksellers.

Title and Copyright Page Example

If you decide to sell your book using Global Distribution, your interior content must include a title page and a copyright page.


The title page comes before the copyright page. Your interior file must have a title page with accurate metadata including:

  • Title: Subtitle
  • Author


Example:

Your Book Title: Subtitle

Author Name


The copyright page comes after the title page. Your interior file must have a copyright page with accurate metadata including:

  •     Title: Subtitle
  •     Author
  •     Copyright date
  •     eBook book ISBN


You, as the creator, are both the copyright holder and publisher of all works created and distributed using the tools and services available on the Lulu.com website. When creating your copyright page, you should list yourself as the copyright holder and publisher. Be sure to enter your ISBN without any dashes, as doing so will result in an ISBN Mismatch error that will prevent you from publishing your ebook in Global Distribution.


Example:

Copyright © 2020 YOUR NAME. All rights reserved.

Published by YOUR NAME / COMPANY NAME

ISBN 1234567891012

Title / Subtitle

Your ebook’s title and subtitle must adhere to strict capitalization rules to pass our retail partner's distribution standards.

  • The first letter of all words in the title and subtitle must be capitalized.
    • Excluding: a, an, and, for, from, of, or, the, to
  • The title must be in English language and match in every instance it appears, including:
    • Metadata entered while creating your ebook
    • Cover Image
    • Title and Copyright pages
  • Titles beginning with articles should be displayed properly (EX: "A Tale of Two Cities", not "Tale of Two Cities, A").
  • Titles cannot include references to pricing.

Author Information

The author, illustrator, editor, or any other credit given to an individual or group who participated in the creation of your ebook must follow all title/subtitle rules listed above, as well as the following requirements:

  • The first name should appear before the last name.
  • Author names must be correctly spelled and capitalized on the cover, within the contents, and in your metadata.
  • Do not enter author names in all capital letters.
  • Retailers list up to five (5) contributors including author, editor, illustrator, and artist. Please list all contributors individually.

Description

Your ebook’s description is used by retailers and Lulu to give potential readers information about your book and to help them decide whether or not to purchase your ebook. Be sure to carefully review the requirements for your description, as these rules are specific and must be adhered to:

  • Your description must be unique to the ebook and must accurately describe the contents.
    • Do not use a generic description for multiple ebook projects
  • Do not use the title, subtitle, or other metadata as the description.
  • Your description must consist of at least 50 characters, excluding blank spaces.
  • Your description cannot contain any advertisements or hyperlinks.
  • References to pricing for the ebook cannot be included.
  • Do not use HTML tags or other text formatting for the description.
  • No mention of included materials (EX: CDs, posters, etc.).
  • Your description cannot upsell a more complete version of the book.
  • Do not mislead buyers or misrepresent your ebook in the description (EX: Calling your ebook an ‘Illustrated Guide’ but including no illustrations or images).

ISBN & Metadata

Your title, subtitle, and author information all constitute metadata. For clarity, all required metadata is listed here. This is not an inclusive list of all data or content that may be considered metadata for the purposes of categorizing your ebook, but if any of the information listed below is missing, inaccurate, or inconsistent, your ebook will be rejected:

  • Title
  • Subtitle
  • Author
  • Copyright notice with date
  • ISBN
  • Description

Cover Image

Your EPUB file should contain your cover image in the appropriate location within your EPUB. If you are creating an EPUB using a DOCX and Lulu’s converter, you must create and upload the cover image to meet Lulu’s minimum requirements for resolution and image size.


Additional requirements for your ebook cover image include:

  • The title, subtitle, and author must appear on the cover and match exactly your ebook’s metadata.
  • Cover text must be English, using Latin character sets.
  • No mention of included materials (EX: CDs, posters, etc.).
  • Your cover cannot upsell a more complete version of the book.
  • Do not mislead buyers or misrepresent your ebook on the cover (EX: Calling your ebook an ‘Illustrated Guide’ but including no illustrations or images).
  • Your description cannot contain any advertisements or hyperlinks.
  • References to pricing for the ebook cannot be included.
  • The cover image must be a flat, 2D image.
  • Your cover image should be sized correctly:
    • 612 x 792 px
    • 72 - 300 ppi resolution


Apple will not accept EPUB files that contain individual images greater than 5.6 million pixels. Authors intending to sell their ebooks on the iBookstore should confirm that the images included in their EPUB file comply with this requirement.


TIP: To determine if your images comply, select the image in your file and view the image properties. The image size will be displayed as dimensions. For example, if the image size is 900 x 900, multiply the numbers to determine the total number of pixels. In this case, the image consists of 810,000 pixels. 


If any image within your file exceeds the 2 million pixel limit that you wish to manually resize, open the image in your image editing program, resize it to meet the requirements, and replace the oversized image with the newly resized image.


For InDesign Users

If you create your EPUB files using InDesign, an OEBPS/Images/191.png file is automatically created. The Lulu Distribution Team has seen significant numbers of ebook rejections from Apple based on the size of this file.


In order to speed the acceptance of your ebook into the iBookstore, we recommend you locate this image file, confirm its dimensions comply with Apple's requirements, and update it if necessary.


Note: You may sell your ebook for free on Lulu and most retail channels; however, Amazon Kindle requires a minimum listing price of $0.99 USD.